Today's Stichomancy for Claire Forlani

gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden ..." I decided that
if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped,some of the fragments
of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention
with careful subtlety to this end.

Conversation Galante

I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester Johnís balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress."

The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson:

vanity, well done. It remains only to get you out of this cold and
poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an
easy conscience. The last is your affair. To the first I think I
can help you. It fells indeed rather oddly; it was but the other
day the Padre came in from the country; and as he and I are old
friends, although of contrary professions, he applied to me in a
matter of distress among some of his parishioners. This was a
family - but you are ignorant of Spain, and even the names of our
grandees are hardly known to you; suffice it, then, that they were
once great people, and are now fallen to the brink of destitution.
Nothing now belongs to them but the residencia, and certain leagues

heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.
While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings,
the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the
floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as
I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had
been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to
acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find
how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were
stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of
the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with